Shelley Cable ASA

Unlocking the potential of accounting through Indigenous participation

About the Speaker

Shelley Cable is a proud Noongar woman who strives to unleash the potential of Indigenous people through business and financial empowerment.

In 2014, Shelley was invited to attend the Aurora Indigenous Scholars’ International Study Tour, where she visited the world’s leading academic institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Six months later, Shelley applied for Stanford University’s MBA Program, and placed in the top 5% of 10,000 worldwide applicants, aged just 19.

After working briefly for a startup in Beijing as a marketing and strategy consultant, in 2015 Shelley joined Shell Australia as a Graduate Finance Analyst – the company’s first Indigenous Graduate. Alongside full-time work, Shelley completed studies in Indigenous Business at Melbourne Business School, where she was subsequently offered a fully-paid MBA Scholarship.

In 2016, Shelley was named Miss NAIDOC Perth, and became an official ambassador for the Indigenous Community. During this time she spoke nationally on the importance of Indigenous business and financial literacy, and also established a social media project to give voice to Perth’s unsung Indigenous heroes, which reached more than one million views in the first three months.

In 2017, Shelley Cable was selected as a representative of Australia at the United Nations, and presented to the UN’s Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on how financial empowerment could help Indigenous peoples to protect and express their human rights. For her work, Shelley has been named a Finalist in the 2018 Western Australian of the Year Awards.

Through her passion, Shelley has quickly become an international advocate for Indigenous business and financial literacy, and hopes she can contribute to increasing the number of Indigenous accountants in Australia, which stands at only 41 in 2018.